Spring Data JPA - Reference Documentation

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Part I. Reference Documentation

Chapter 1. Repositories

1.1. Introduction

Implementing a data access layer of an application has been
cumbersome for quite a while. Too much boilerplate code had to be written.
Domain classes were anemic and not designed in a real object oriented or
domain driven manner.

Using both of these technologies makes developers life a lot easier
regarding rich domain model's persistence. Nevertheless the amount of
boilerplate code to implement repositories especially is still quite high.
So the goal of the repository abstraction of Spring Data is to reduce the
effort to implement data access layers for various persistence stores
significantly.

The following chapters will introduce the core concepts and
interfaces of Spring Data repositories.

1.2. Core concepts

The central interface in Spring Data repository abstraction is
Repository (probably not that much of a
surprise). It is typeable to the domain class to manage as well as the id
type of the domain class. This interface mainly acts as marker interface
to capture the types to deal with and help us when discovering interfaces
that extend this one. Beyond that there's
CrudRepository which provides some
sophisticated functionality around CRUD for the entity being
managed.

Usually we will have persistence technology specific sub-interfaces
to include additional technology specific methods. We will now ship
implementations for a variety of Spring Data modules that implement this
interface.

On top of the CrudRepository there is
a PagingAndSortingRepository abstraction
that adds additional methods to ease paginated access to entities:

At this stage we barely scratched the surface of what's possible
with the repositories but the general approach should be clear. Let's go
through each of these steps and figure out details and various options
that you have at each stage.

1.3.1. Defining repository interfaces

As a very first step you define a domain class specific repository
interface. It's got to extend Repository
and be typed to the domain class and an ID type. If you want to expose
CRUD methods for that domain type, extend
CrudRepository instead of
Repository.

1.3.1.1. Fine tuning repository definition

Usually you will have your repository interface extend
Repository,
CrudRepository or
PagingAndSortingRepository. If you
don't like extending Spring Data interfaces at all you can also
annotate your repository interface with
@RepositoryDefinition. Extending
CrudRepository will expose a complete
set of methods to manipulate your entities. If you would rather be
selective about the methods being exposed, simply copy the ones you
want to expose from CrudRepository into
your domain repository.

In the first step we define a common base interface for all our
domain repositories and expose findOne(…) as
well as save(…).These methods will be routed
into the base repository implementation of the store of your choice
because they are matching the method signatures in
CrudRepository. So our
UserRepository will now be able to save
users, find single ones by id as well as triggering a query to find
Users by their email address.

1.3.2. Defining query methods

1.3.2.1. Query lookup strategies

The next thing we have to discuss is the definition of query
methods. There are two main ways that the repository proxy is able to
come up with the store specific query from the method name. The first
option is to derive the query from the method name directly, the
second is using some kind of additionally created query. What detailed
options are available pretty much depends on the actual store,
however, there's got to be some algorithm that decides what actual
query is created.

There are three strategies available for the repository
infrastructure to resolve the query. The strategy to be used can be
configured at the namespace through the
query-lookup-strategy attribute. However, It might be the
case that some of the strategies are not supported for specific
datastores. Here are your options:

CREATE

This strategy will try to construct a store specific query
from the query method's name. The general approach is to remove a
given set of well-known prefixes from the method name and parse the
rest of the method. Read more about query construction in Section 1.3.2.2, “Query creation”.

USE_DECLARED_QUERY

This strategy tries to find a declared query which will be
used for execution first. The query could be defined by an
annotation somewhere or declared by other means. Please consult the
documentation of the specific store to find out what options are
available for that store. If the repository infrastructure does not
find a declared query for the method at bootstrap time it will
fail.

CREATE_IF_NOT_FOUND (default)

This strategy is actually a combination of CREATE
and USE_DECLARED_QUERY. It will try to lookup a
declared query first but create a custom method name based query if
no declared query was found. This is the default lookup strategy and
thus will be used if you don't configure anything explicitly. It
allows quick query definition by method names but also custom tuning
of these queries by introducing declared queries as needed.

1.3.2.2. Query creation

The query builder mechanism built into Spring Data repository
infrastructure is useful to build constraining queries over entities
of the repository. We will strip the prefixes findBy,
find, readBy, read,
getBy as well as get from the method and
start parsing the rest of it. At a very basic level you can define
conditions on entity properties and concatenate them with
AND and OR.

The actual result of parsing that method will of course depend
on the persistence store we create the query for, however, there are
some general things to notice. The expressions are usually property
traversals combined with operators that can be concatenated. As you
can see in the example you can combine property expressions with And
and Or. Beyond that you also get support for various operators like
Between, LessThan,
GreaterThan, Like for the
property expressions. As the operators supported can vary from
datastore to datastore please consult the according part of the
reference documentation.

1.3.2.2.1. Property expressions

Property expressions can just refer to a direct property of
the managed entity (as you just saw in the example above). On query
creation time we already make sure that the parsed property is at a
property of the managed domain class. However, you can also define
constraints by traversing nested properties. Assume
Persons have Addresses
with ZipCodes. In that case a method name
of

List<Person> findByAddressZipCode(ZipCode zipCode);

will create the property traversal
x.address.zipCode. The resolution algorithm starts with
interpreting the entire part (AddressZipCode) as
property and checks the domain class for a property with that name
(uncapitalized). If it succeeds it just uses that. If not it starts
splitting up the source at the camel case parts from the right side
into a head and a tail and tries to find the according property,
e.g. AddressZip and Code. If
we find a property with that head we take the tail and continue
building the tree down from there. As in our case the first split
does not match we move the split point to the left
(Address, ZipCode).

Although this should work for most cases, there might be cases
where the algorithm could select the wrong property. Suppose our
Person class has an addressZip
property as well. Then our algorithm would match in the first split
round already and essentially choose the wrong property and finally
fail (as the type of addressZip probably has
no code property). To resolve this ambiguity you can use
_ inside your method name to manually define
traversal points. So our method name would end up like so:

List<Person> findByAddress_ZipCode(ZipCode zipCode);

1.3.2.3. Special parameter handling

To hand parameters to your query you simply define method
parameters as already seen in the examples above. Besides that we will
recognizes certain specific types to apply pagination and sorting to
your queries dynamically.

The first method allows you to pass a Pageable
instance to the query method to dynamically add paging to your
statically defined query. Sorting options are handed via
the Pageable instance too. If you only
need sorting, simply add a Sort parameter to your method.
As you also can see, simply returning a
List is possible as well. We will then
not retrieve the additional metadata required to build the actual
Page instance but rather simply
restrict the query to lookup only the given range of entities.

Note

To find out how many pages you get for a query entirely we
have to trigger an additional count query. This will be derived from
the query you actually trigger by default.

1.3.3. Creating repository instances

So now the question is how to create instances and bean
definitions for the repository interfaces defined.

1.3.3.1. Spring

The easiest way to do so is by using the Spring namespace that
is shipped with each Spring Data module that supports the repository
mechanism. Each of those includes a repositories element that allows
you to simply define a base package that Spring will scan for
you.

In this case we instruct Spring to scan
com.acme.repositories and all its sub packages for
interfaces extending Repository or one
of its sub-interfaces. For each interface found it will register the
persistence technology specific
FactoryBean to create the according
proxies that handle invocations of the query methods. Each of these
beans will be registered under a bean name that is derived from the
interface name, so an interface of
UserRepository would be registered
under userRepository. The base-package
attribute allows the use of wildcards, so that you can have a pattern
of scanned packages.

Using filters

By default we will pick up every interface extending the
persistence technology specific
Repository sub-interface located
underneath the configured base package and create a bean instance
for it. However, you might want finer grained control over which
interfaces bean instances get created for. To do this we support the
use of <include-filter /> and
<exclude-filter /> elements inside
<repositories />. The semantics are exactly
equivalent to the elements in Spring's context namespace. For
details see Spring reference documentation on these
elements.

E.g. to exclude certain interfaces from instantiation as
repository, you could use the following configuration:

1.3.3.2. Standalone usage

You can also use the repository infrastructure outside of a
Spring container usage. You will still need to have some of the Spring
libraries on your classpath but you can generally setup repositories
programmatically as well. The Spring Data modules providing repository
support ship a persistence technology specific
RepositoryFactory that can be used as
follows:

1.4. Custom implementations

1.4.1. Adding behaviour to single repositories

Often it is necessary to provide a custom implementation for a few
repository methods. Spring Data repositories easily allow you to provide
custom repository code and integrate it with generic CRUD abstraction
and query method functionality. To enrich a repository with custom
functionality you have to define an interface and an implementation for
that functionality first and let the repository interface you provided
so far extend that custom interface.

Note that the implementation itself does not depend on
Spring Data and can be a regular Spring bean. So you can use standard
dependency injection behaviour to inject references to other beans,
take part in aspects and so on.

Configuration

If you use namespace configuration the repository infrastructure
tries to autodetect custom implementations by looking up classes in
the package we found a repository using the naming conventions
appending the namespace element's attribute
repository-impl-postfix to the classname. This suffix
defaults to Impl.

The first configuration example will try to lookup a class
com.acme.repository.UserRepositoryImpl to act
as custom repository implementation, where the second example will try
to lookup
com.acme.repository.UserRepositoryFooBar.

Manual wiring

The approach above works perfectly well if your custom
implementation uses annotation based configuration and autowiring
entirely as it will be treated as any other Spring bean. If your
custom implementation bean needs some special wiring you simply
declare the bean and name it after the conventions just described. We
will then pick up the custom bean by name rather than creating an
instance.

This also works if you use automatic repository lookup without
defining single <repository /> elements.

In case you are not in control of the implementation bean name
(e.g. if you wrap a generic repository facade around an existing
repository implementation) you can explicitly tell the
<repository /> element which bean to use as custom
implementation by using the repository-impl-ref
attribute.

1.4.2. Adding custom behaviour to all repositories

In other cases you might want to add a single method to all of
your repository interfaces. So the approach just shown is not feasible.
The first step to achieve this is adding and intermediate interface to
declare the shared behaviour

Now your individual repository interfaces will extend this
intermediate interface to include the functionality declared. The second
step is to create an implementation of this interface that extends the
persistence technology specific repository base class which will act as
custom base class for the repository proxies then.

Note

If you're using automatic repository interface detection using
the Spring namespace using the interface just as is will cause Spring
to create an instance of MyRepository.
This is of course not desired as it just acts as intermediary between
Repository and the actual repository
interfaces you want to define for each entity. To exclude an interface
extending Repository from being
instantiated as repository instance annotate it with
@NoRepositoryBean.

The last step to get this implementation used as base class for
Spring Data repositories is replacing the standard
RepositoryFactoryBean with a custom one using a
custom RepositoryFactory that in turn creates
instances of your MyRepositoryImpl class.

Finally you can either declare beans of the custom factory
directly or use the factory-class attribute of the Spring
namespace to tell the repository infrastructure to use your custom
factory implementation.

1.5. Extensions

This chapter documents a set of Spring Data extensions that enable
Spring Data usage in a variety of contexts. Currently most of the
integration is targeted towards Spring MVC.

1.5.1. Domain class web binding for Spring MVC

Given you are developing a Spring MVC web applications you
typically have to resolve domain class ids from URLs. By default it's
your task to transform that request parameter or URL part into the
domain class to hand it layers below then or execute business logic on
the entities directly. This should look something like this:

First you pretty much have to declare a repository dependency for
each controller to lookup the entity managed by the controller or
repository respectively. Beyond that looking up the entity is
boilerplate as well as it's always a findOne(…)
call. Fortunately Spring provides means to register custom converting
components that allow conversion between a String
value to an arbitrary type.

PropertyEditors

For versions up to Spring 3.0 simple Java
PropertyEditors had to be used. Thus,
we offer a DomainClassPropertyEditorRegistrar,
that will look up all Spring Data repositories registered in the
ApplicationContext and register a
custom PropertyEditor for the managed
domain class

ConversionService

As of Spring 3.0 the
PropertyEditor support is superseeded
by a new conversion infrstructure that leaves all the drawbacks of
PropertyEditors behind and uses a
stateless X to Y conversion approach. We now ship with a
DomainClassConverter that pretty much mimics
the behaviour of
DomainClassPropertyEditorRegistrar. To register
the converter you have to declare
ConversionServiceFactoryBean, register the
converter and tell the Spring MVC namespace to use the configured
conversion service:

As you can see the naive approach requires the method to contain
an HttpServletRequest parameter that has
to be parsed manually. We even omitted an appropriate failure handling
which would make the code even more verbose. The bottom line is that the
controller actually shouldn't have to handle the functionality of
extracting pagination information from the request. So we include a
PageableArgumentResolver that will do the work
for you.

The PageableArgumentResolver will
automatically resolve request parameters to build a
PageRequest instance. By default it will expect
the following structure for the request parameters:

Table 1.1. Request parameters evaluated by
PageableArgumentResolver

page

The page you want to retrieve

page.size

The size of the page you want to retrieve

page.sort

The property that should be sorted by

page.sort.dir

The direction that should be used for sorting

In case you need multiple Pageables
to be resolved from the request (for multiple tables e.g.) you can use
Spring's @Qualifier annotation to
distinguish one from another. The request parameters then have to be
prefixed with ${qualifier}_. So a method signature like
this:

you'd have to populate foo_page and
bar_page and the according subproperties.

Defaulting

The PageableArgumentResolver will use a
PageRequest with the first page and a page size
of 10 by default and will use that in case it can't resolve a
PageRequest from the request (because of
missing parameters e.g.). You can configure a global default on the
bean declaration directly. In case you might need controller method
specific defaults for the Pageable
simply annotate the method parameter with
@PageableDefaults and specify page and
page size as annotation attributes:

Chapter 2. JPA Repositories

Abstract

This chapter includes details of the JPA repository
implementation.

2.1. Introduction

2.1.1. Spring namespace

The JPA module of Spring Data contains a custom namespace that
allows defining repository beans. It also contains certain features and
element attributes that are special to JPA. Generally the JPA
repositories can be set up using the repositories element:

Using this element looks up Spring Data repositories as described
in Section 1.3.3, “Creating repository instances”. Beyond that it
activates persistence exception translation for all beans annotated with
@Repository to let exceptions being
thrown by the JPA presistence providers be converted into Spring's
DataAccessException hierarchy.

Custom namespace attributes

Beyond the default attributes of the repositories
element the JPA namespace offers additional attributes to gain more
detailled control over the setup of the repositories:

Table 2.1. Custom JPA-specific attributes of the repositories
element

entity-manager-factory-ref

Explicitly wire the
EntityManagerFactory to be used
with the repositories being detected by the
repositories element. Usually used if multiple
EntityManagerFactory beans are
used within the application. If not configured we will
automatically lookup the single
EntityManagerFactory configured
in the
ApplicationContext.

transaction-manager-ref

Explicitly wire tha
PlatformTransactionManager to
be used with the repositories being detected by the
repositories element. Usually only necessary if
multiple transaction managers and/or
EntityManagerFactory beans have
been configured. Default to a single defined
PlatformTransactionManager
inside the current
ApplicationContext.

2.2. Query methods

2.2.1. Query lookup strategies

The JPA module supports defining a query manually as String or
have it being derived from the method name.

Declared queries

Although getting a query derived from the method name is quite
convenient, one might face the situation in which either the method
name parser does not support the keyword one wants to use or the
method name would get unnecessarily ugly. So you can either use JPA
named queries through a naming convention (see Section 2.2.3, “Using JPA NamedQueries” for more information) or
rather annotate your query method with
@Query (see Section 2.2.4, “Using @Query” for details).

2.2.2. Query creation

Generally the query creation mechanism for JPA works as described
in Section 1.3, “Query methods”. Here's a short example
of what a JPA query method translates into:

We will create a query using the JPA criteria API from this
but essentially this translates into the following query:

select u from User u where u.emailAddress = ?1 and u.lastname = ?2

Spring Data JPA will do a property check and traverse nested
properties as described in Section 1.3.2.2.1, “Property expressions”. Here's
an overview of the keywords supported for JPA and what a method
containing that keyword essentially translates to.

Table 2.2. Supported keywords inside method names

Keyword

Sample

JPQL snippet

And

findByLastnameAndFirstname

… where x.lastname = ?1 and x.firstname =
?2

Or

findByLastnameOrFirstname

… where x.lastname = ?1 or x.firstname =
?2

Between

findByStartDateBetween

… where x.startDate between 1? and
?2

LessThan

findByAgeLessThan

… where x.age < ?1

GreaterThan

findByAgeGreaterThan

… where x.age > ?1

IsNull

findByAgeIsNull

… where x.age is null

IsNotNull,NotNull

findByAge(Is)NotNull

… where x.age not null

Like

findByFirstnameLike

… where x.firstname like ?1

NotLike

findByFirstnameNotLike

… where x.firstname not like ?1

OrderBy

findByAgeOrderByLastnameDesc

… where x.age = ?1 order by x.lastname
desc

Not

findByLastnameNot

… where x.lastname <> ?1

In

findByAgeIn(Collection<Age>
ages)

… where x.age in ?1

NotIn

findByAgeNotIn(Collection<Age>
age)

… where x.age not in ?1

Note

In and NotIn also take any subclass
of Collection as parameter as well as
arrays or varargs.

2.2.3. Using JPA NamedQueries

Note

The examples use simple <named-query />
element and @NamedQuery annotation. The queries for these
configuration elements have to be defined in JPA query language. Of
course you can use <named-native-query /> or
@NamedNativeQuery too. These elements allow you to define
the query in native SQL by losing the database platform
independence.

XML named query definition

To use XML configuration simply add the necessary
<named-query /> element to the
orm.xml JPA configuration file located in
META-INF folder of your classpath. Automatic
invocation of named queries is enabled by using some defined naming
convention. For more details see below.

As you can see the query has a special name which will be used
to resolve it at runtime.

Annotation configuration

Annotation configuration has the advantage of not needing
another configuration file to be edited, probably lowering maintenance
costs. You pay for that benefit by the need to recompile your domain
class for every new query declaration.

Spring Data will try to resolve a call to these methods to a
named query, starting with the simple name of the configured domain
class, followed by the method name separated by a dot. So the example
here would use the named queries defined above instead of trying to
create a query from the method name.

2.2.4. Using @Query

Using named queries to declare queries for entities is a valid
approach and works fine for a small number of queries. As the queries
themselves are tied to the Java method that executes them you actually
can bind them directly using the Spring Data JPA @Query
annotation rather than annotating them to the domain class. This will
free the domain class from persistence specific information and
co-locate the query to the repository interface.

Queries annotated to the query method will take precedence over
queries defined using @NamedQuery or named queries declared
in orm.xml.

2.2.5. Using named parameters

By default Spring Data JPA will use position based parameter
binding as described in all the samples above. This makes query methods
a little error prone to refactoring regarding the parameter position. To
solve this issue you can use @Param annotation to give a
method parameter a concrete name and bind the name in the query:

Note that the method parameters are switched according to the
occurrence in the query defined.

2.2.6. Modifying queries

All the sections above describe how to declare queries to access a
given entity or collection of entities. Of course you can add custom
modifying behaviour by using facilities described in ???. As this approach is feasible for
comprehensive custom functionality, you can achieve the execution of
modifying queries that actually only need parameter binding by
annotating the query method with @Modifying:

This will trigger the query annotated to the method as updating
query instead of a selecting one. As the
EntityManager might contain outdated
entities after the execution of the modifying query, we automatically
clear it (see JavaDoc of
EntityManager.clear()
for details). This will effectively drop all non-flushed changes still
pending in the EntityManager. If you
don't wish the EntityManager to be
cleared automatically you can set
@Modifying annotation's
clearAutomatically attribute to
false;

2.3. Specifications

JPA 2 introduces a criteria API that can be used to build queries
programmatically. Writing a criteria you actually define the
where-clause of a query for a domain class. Taking another step back these
criteria can be regarded as predicate over the entity that is described by
the JPA criteria API constraints.

Spring Data JPA takes the concept of a specification from Eric
Evans' book "Domain Driven Design", following the same semantics and
providing an API to define such
Specifications using the JPA criteria API.
To support specifications you can extend your repository interface with
the JpaSpecificationExecutor
interface:

Okay, so what is the typical use case?
Specifications can easily be used to build
an extensible set of predicates on top of an entity that then can be
combined and used with JpaRepository
without the need to declare a query (method) for every needed combination.
Here's an example:

Admittedly the amount of boilerplate leaves room for improvement
(that will hopefully be reduced by Java 8 closures) but the client side
becomes much nicer as you will see below. Besides that we have expressed
some criteria on a business requirement abstraction level and created
executable Specifications. So a client
might use a Specification as
follows:

Okay, why not simply create a query for this kind of data access?
You're right. Using a single Specification
does not gain a lot of benefit over a plain query declaration. The power
of Specifications really shines when you
combine them to create new Specification
objects. You can achieve this through the
Specifications helper class we provide to build
expressions like this:

As
you can see, Specifications offers some glue-code
methods to chain and combine
Specifications. Thus extending your data
access layer is just a matter of creating new
Specification implementations and
combining them with ones already existing.

2.4. Transactionality

CRUD methods on repository instances are transactional by default.
For reading operations the transaction configuration readOnly
flag is set to true, all others are configured with a plain
@Transactional so that default transaction
configuration applies. For details see JavaDoc of
Repository. If you need to tweak transaction
configuration for one of the methods declared in
Repository simply redeclare the method in
your repository interface as follows:

This will cause the findAll() method to
be executed with a timeout of 10 seconds and without the
readOnly flag.

Another possibility to alter transactional behaviour is using a
facade or service implementation that typically covers more than one
repository. Its purpose is to define transactional boundaries for non-CRUD
operations:

Example 2.13. Using a facade to define transactions for multiple repository
calls

This will cause call to
addRoleToAllUsers(…) to run inside a
transaction (participating in an existing one or create a new one if
none already running). The transaction configuration at the repositories
will be neglected then as the outer transaction configuration determines
the actual one used. Note that you will have to activate
<tx:annotation-driven /> explicitly to get annotation
based configuration at facades working. The example above assumes you
are using component scanning.

2.4.1. Transactional query methods

To allow your query methods to be transactional simply use
@Transactional at the repository
interface you define.

Typically you will want the readOnly flag set to
true as most of the query methods will only read data. In contrast to
that deleteInactiveUsers() makes use of the
@Modifying annotation and overrides the
transaction configuration. Thus the method will be executed with
readOnly flag set to false.

Note

It's definitely reasonable to use transactions for read only
queries and we can mark them as such by setting the
readOnly flag. This will not, however, act as check that
you do not trigger a manipulating query (although some databases
reject INSERT and UPDATE
statements inside a read only transaction). The readOnly
flag instead is propagated as hint to the underlying JDBC driver for
performance optimizations. Furthermore, Spring will perform some
optimizations on the underlying JPA provider. E.g. when used with
Hibernate the flush mode is set to NEVER when you
configure a transaction as readOnly which causes
Hibernate to skip dirty checks (a noticeable improvement on large
object trees).

2.5. Auditing

Most applications will require some form of auditability to track
when an entity was created or modified and by whom. Spring Data JPA
provides facilities to add this audit information to an entity
transparently by AOP means. To take part in this functionality your domain
classes must implement a more advanced interface:

As you can see the modifying entity itself only has to be an entity.
Mostly this will be some sort of User entity, so we chose U as parameter
type.

Note

To minimize boilerplate code Spring Data JPA offers
AbstractPersistable and
AbstractAuditable base classes that implement and
pre-configure entities. Thus you can decide to only implement the
interface or enjoy more sophisticated support by extending the base
class.

General auditing configuration

Spring Data JPA ships with an entity listener that can be used to
trigger capturing auditing information. So first you have to register
the AuditingEntityListener inside your
orm.xml to be used for all entities in your
persistence contexts:

Usually you will have some kind of authentication component in
your application that tracks the user currently working with the system.
This component should be AuditorAware and
thus allow seamless tracking of the auditor.

2.6. Miscellaneous

2.6.1. Merging persistence units

Spring supports having multiple persistence units out of the box.
Sometimes, however, you might want to modularize your application but
still make sure that all these modules run inside a single persistence
unit at runtime. To do so Spring Data JPA offers a
PersistenceUnitManager implementation that automatically
merges persistence units based on their name.

Part II. Appendix

Appendix A. Namespace reference

A.1. The <repositories /> element

The <repositories /> element acts as container
for <repository /> elements or can be left empty to
trigger auto detection[1] of repository instances. Attributes defined for
<repositories /> are propagated to contained
<repository /> elements but can be overridden of
course.

Table A.1. Attributes

Name

Description

base-package

Defines the package to be used to be scanned for repository
interfaces extending *Repository
(actual interface is determined by specific Spring Data module) in
auto detection mode. All packages below the configured package
will be scanned, too. In auto configuration mode (no nested
<repository /> elements) wildcards are also
allowed.

repository-impl-postfix

Defines the postfix to autodetect custom repository
implementations. Classes whose names end with the configured
postfix will be considered as candidates. Defaults to
Impl.

A.2. The <repository /> element

The <repository /> element can contain all
attributes of <repositories /> except
base-package. This will result in overriding the values
configured in the surrounding <repositories /> element.
Thus here we will only document extended attributes.

Table A.2. Attributes

id

Defines the id of the bean the repository instance will be
registered under as well as the repository interface name.

B.2. Infrastructure

B.2.1.

Currently I have implemented a repository layer based on
HibernateDaoSupport. I create a
SessionFactory by using Spring's
AnnotationSessionFactoryBean. How do I get
Spring Data repositories working in this environment?

You have to replace
AnnotationSessionFactoryBean with the
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.
Supposed you have registered it under
entityManagerFactory you can reference it in you
repositories based on HibernateDaoSupport as
follows:

Example B.1. Looking up a SessionFactory from an
HibernateEntityManagerFactory

B.3. Auditing

B.3.1.

I want to use Spring Data JPA auditing capabilities but have
my database already set up to set modification and creation date on
entities. How to prevent Spring Data from setting the date
programmatically.

Just use the set-dates attribute of the
auditing namespace element to false.